House Repairs
by TrenchcoatsAreSexy
Summary: Cuddy needs to fix her house - and her House. Cameron is willing to help with one, but Chase is not happy with this plan at all...
1. Prologue 1

House Repairs

Prologue 1: Phone Call

**A/N: This fic is dedicated to my wonderful reviewer, Normalscaresme, who loves Chase and Cameron… There will be a lot of them in this fic, I promise :D**

**Disclaimer: I don't own anyone on House.**

"Where do I even start?" Dr. Lisa Cuddy asked, staring at the huge pile of insurance forms that were spilled over the mahogany table in her sister, Julia's, living room. "I mean, I don't even know which of these I need to fill out first. I feel like I should know what to do with paperwork – it's not like I don't see enough of it, but…"

"You're in shock," Julia chimed in, and Cuddy felt that she sounded particularly patronizing. "You're still trying to process what he did. It's okay – I mean, you gave him a chance and he blew it, right?" Cuddy glared at her, sensing a slight note of what could actually be cheer in her voice.

_What the hell is her problem?_ Cuddy thought angrily. After all, none of this would have happened if Julia hadn't insisted upon playing matchmaker after her breakup with House. Then again, if she hadn't decided to take that guy up on his offer… She hadn't even liked him all that much, and that dinner certainly wasn't worth having to move in with Julia while her house was repaired; certainly wasn't worth all of this hassle and she didn't even entirely know all of what had been damaged in the wreck. Not only that, but Julia had been trying to give her hotlines for battered women ever since the crash – which had been a week ago, now. Cuddy considered that lighting herself on fire would have probably been much less painful than this. _Thanks a lot, House,_ she thought, _just when I thought you couldn't do anything more self-centered and destructive than you already had done, you pull this. _Against her will, however, she felt her heart begin to soften. _He told you he was hurt – you told him to show his anger. And he did._

"Just let it go, Julia," Cuddy growled. "This isn't about House."

"Like hell it's not about House!" Julia retorted. "Nobody else ran into your living room. He did. You need to stop living in denial. I know you thought there was good in him…"

"There _is_ good in him," Cuddy shot back, "And you're speaking about the man I love, okay? So why don't you back off for about five minutes if you're not going to help me. A week of your harping has been more than enough." She stood up and walked towards the staircase, wishing more than anything that she could be back in her home, her sanctuary, her… _Goddamnit House, I hate you. _

As she made her way to the top of the stairs, she caught a glimpse of Rachel in one of the three bedrooms, her wide eyes peeping out eagerly and looking for her mother.

"Hey," Cuddy called softly, "How are you holding up?" At least Rachel had been at a sitter when the crash had happened, and she hadn't had to observe the damage. Didn't House ever think about anything or anyone other than himself? But she knew, this wasn't some orchestrated manipulation. This had been rage, pure and simple. And in that aspect, she had to kind of appreciate it, if not ever justify it.

"Fine," Rachel murmured, the brush-off phrase for teenagers already seeming somewhat fitting coming from her. She tilted her head to the side and then asked, "When can we go home?"

"Not for a little while, honey," Cuddy replied, "We need to fix the house."

"What happened to it?"

"It broke," Cuddy responded, a bit more curtly than she had intended.

"But Mom," Rachel asked, "If we're here, how is House going to find us?" Cuddy opened her mouth, but was thankfully saved from responding by the sound of her cell phone ringing. She didn't recognize the ring tone, and she debated picking up for a moment before deciding she needed the distraction. She fished in her pocket and pulled it out, flipping it open and pressing it to her ear.

"Hello? Dr. Cuddy here."

"Ah, hello!" the female voice on the other end of the phone line said in a deep Caribbean accent. "I am reaching Dr. Lisa Cuddy?"

"Yes, you are," Cuddy replied, wondering what this could be about. Maybe she had ended up on some spam phone list or there was a bill she'd forgotten to pay. Alternatively, it could just be a prank call, from… somebody?

"This is Dr. Raca Beyda from Barbuda Hospital in Antigua. I'm contacting you because you are listed… as emergency contact for a Gregory House?" the voice explained, and Cuddy swallowed hard. What was this woman going to tell her next? Was House dead? Gravely ill? How the hell had he ended up in Antigua – not that that was the most important part of things… Why was she even still listed as his emergency contact? She hadn't even known that she was _ever_ listed as his emergency contact?

"Yes… I know Dr. House," Cuddy replied quietly, and she bit her lip in a silent prayer that the next news would not be that House was dead. _God, anything but that. Even as furious as I am with him – not that. _

"Dr. House collapsed and was taken to this hospital… He has medical needs that we believe can best be met if he were to be returned to the United States as quickly as possible," Dr. Beyda continued, "Do you have any preference for a hospital for him to be transported to?"

Against Cuddy's will, she heard herself saying, "Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital in Princeton, New Jersey… I'm Dean of Medicine there." _And I have a restraining order against him that will get him arrested as soon as he arrives in the airport. I better get rid of that. _"And what do you mean… medical needs? You mean his leg?" She felt a rush of anger that, apparently, Antigua was not equipped to handle House's disability, and was shipping him back all this way as if he were some sort of damaged goods to be returned.

"Oh, no, ma'am… Dr. Cuddy? You didn't know? Dr. House has leukemia."


	2. Prologue 2

Prologue 2: Homecoming

_I hate airplanes. I hate them with all of my will. I've always hated them, _Allison Cameron repeated as her plane began to spiral downward towards the Newark Airport. She jostled and shook and held on for dear life before finally being able to let out a sigh of relief as the plane stopped shaking and the announcement came over the PA system that _All passengers may now depart in an orderly fashion. Thank you for flying American Airlines._

Maybe it wasn't airplanes that she hated. Maybe it was just the entire fact that she'd decided to come back to Princeton, now, over a year after she'd divorced her husband, Robert Chase. She didn't know what she would find, but she couldn't stop thinking about him. Maybe there was a chance.

_He killed a man, _Cameron's internal voice reminded her, and if it had a face it would have been giving her the same morally outraged gander that she'd given House more than once. _Why do you think you can ever get over that?_

Yes, Chase had killed a man – a dictator, yes, but still a man, but he'd done it for good reasons, he had done it to save people and why should she destroy her own happiness on the account of a dictator who was dead anyway? There was no bringing him back – not that anyone would have actually wanted to – and Cameron was still alive, and she deserved the right to be happy.

_Just… keep telling yourself that. Maybe it will work long enough to get you to Chase. That is, if he hasn't already found somebody else._

The thought was like a knife through her heart, and it stopped her as she walked down the aisle; a man behind her shoved her out of the way and broke her out of the thought as she gave up a small "umph!" of protest.

_This is a mistake._

But now she could go back and at least see Chase. At least find out if all hope was really lost for them.

_If nothing else, at least you get to see House again._

Where had _that_ thought come from? She was over House. Definitely. She'd been over him for years.

_I just miss him. He's my boss. It's normal. I'm here for Chase._

Cameron didn't realize she had been moving until she flagged down the cab.

"Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital," she told the driver, a young Indian man who had his radio on and who smiled at Cameron as she slid into the backseat.

"I'll take you there," he replied simply and didn't talk for the rest of the ride. She wished he had, maybe then she'd stop having these conversations with herself. Questions that she wasn't ready to answer.

Pulling into the hospital parking lot was like walking into a dream, one that wasn't quite real and one that she wasn't sure she could or should touch, lest it fade, lest it turn into dust and dissolve.

She reached through the slot, paid the cabbie, heard herself saying, "Keep the change" but not remembering how much change that actually was; the look on the cabbie's face indicated to her that it may have been a lot. She no longer cared, though, because the thing was that she was going to see Chase.

She was going to see Chase.

She half-expected him to appear as soon as she walked through the door of the hospital, but she was relieved that she didn't – she had to figure out what she was going to say, how she was ever going to start this. Maybe she should just turn around now and fly back home; she still could and this could have just all been chalked up to an aborted plan.

Instead of seeing Chase, she was surprised to see Cuddy racing by her on the opposite side, her face contorted in worry, and she followed her instinctively even as her brain was thrashing her for doing so. _You don't even work here anymore, _the voice critiqued, _why the hell are you bothering Cuddy? _

Instead, she heard her voice yelling, "Dr. Cuddy!" even as she ran to keep up with her former boss… or former boss of boss.

"Cameron!" Cuddy exclaimed, surprised, and stopped dead in her tracks. "What are you doing here?"

"I came back," she said simply, and couldn't add _to see Chase_.

"Okay," Cuddy replied, her voice a mix of tired and skeptical.

"What's going on?" Cameron pressed, wanting to deal with someone else's problems instead of her own, needing to be the helper, the fixer, even as she was sure that Cuddy was going to tell her she couldn't do anything as she didn't even work here anymore. "Can I help?" Cuddy's lips pursed and she nodded.

"Yeah, you can help," she replied, "Get yourself tested for bone marrow type." Cameron looked at her, raising an eyebrow.

"Bone marrow type?" Cameron asked. Cuddy began walking swiftly again, with a purpose, her eyes straight ahead. "Who needs a bone marrow transplant?"

"House does," Cuddy replied curtly, still walking, before she disappeared into a room, and Cameron couldn't follow. She stopped in her tracks and she couldn't quite comprehend the words. _House needs a bone marrow transplant?_

She could understand Cuddy's worry, now – House had always been vital to her, almost like a part of her. Cuddy would never let anything happen to House, she would protect him endlessly, the way Cameron had always wanted to. _Cuddy must have already gotten tested,_ Cameron thought wryly, _there's no way she'd let me have the satisfaction of helping House if she could help him instead._

But that was neither here nor there. She needed to go take the test, see if she could be a donor. She might spend her first day back in Princeton on a hospital bed. It was ironic. When she found Chase – if she found Chase – she would have to tell him so.

But at least now, even if Chase told her to go away, even if he laughed in her face, she would have a reason to stay.


	3. Prologue 3

Prologue 3: Matchmaker

Cuddy had been staring at the wall in her office for at least ten minutes; Wilson had been counting.

"Cuddy?" he called again, for the second time, his voice soft and careful and still in a bit of shock as he reached up, cradling his broken right wrist out of habit – to make sure it was still there, maybe. He couldn't believe the words his boss had told him – _House. Leukemia. Antigua?_

None of them really made any more sense than the one before it, but Cuddy was dead serious. Was House, though? After all, he'd faked cancer before, so was this just a case of The Boy Who Cried Cancer? Wilson had to be sure.

And then Wilson had run tests – House hadn't said a word. Not to him, not to Cuddy; he just nodded his assent and he signed forms and he let them run the tests as if they were mechanical objects moving around him instead of people that loved and cared about him and were hurt by him. Wilson considered that maybe House was in as much shock as they were, and at that he was suddenly sure that this was not a prank, this was not a House test or a way to get Cuddy back by making her feel bad for him. This was real, and Wilson was terrified.

Cuddy was just as terrified. _Leukemia. House._ She could remember calling the police and lifting the restraining order, could remember the disapproving glances Julia had given her when she'd done so, but just barely. House didn't have his job back at the hospital yet – but then again, she hadn't quite ever really fired him, either – but now he was a patient. Their patient. She wished he would just speak to her, tell her why he'd been so furious as to destroy her house; but it was so irrelevant in the grand scheme, now.

She hadn't told her sister why she'd removed the restraining order, and her sister had harped on about how Cuddy had battered woman's syndrome and she could give her some wonderful hotlines and really Cuddy could do so much better and why did she keep running back to House. It had taken every inch of Cuddy's resolve to not scream at her, slap her, tear at her with her fingernails in some ridiculous catfight because she hadn't needed that then, she had needed support but when did Julia ever give _that_?

At least now, staring at Wilson, she could see her own eyes reflected back at her, the same mix of disbelief and fear and horror.

"I'm not a match," Wilson said a second later, "Two-of-six…" He bit his lip and ran his left arm up his bandaged wrist again. He couldn't help but think of House joking about Wilson being the universal donor, with type O blood, and House the universal receiver, with type AB blood. He wished that were true, now. At least he could help House as best he could as his oncologist… But the whole situation just seemed utterly wrong.

Wilson thought of Amber, dying in his arms. That crime that he'd blamed House for, shattered House for.

He thought of House's words: "If you die, then I'll be alone."

House couldn't die in his arms, too – no, he couldn't. He wouldn't.

* * *

><p>Chase thought he'd seen a ghost. He'd been heading towards the diagnostics lounge, as Foreman – temporarily heading the department in House's absence, which he still hadn't gotten the complete story on – didn't currently have a case and as such, there was nothing to do. He thought his mind must have been drifting when he saw a blonde bob walk by him, a blonde bob that reminded him of Cameron's hair color.<p>

Not her hair color when he'd met her, of course – then it had been silky chestnut brown, dark and gentle and soft. Then she'd dyed it blonde, the same color as his but prettier, gentler, pulled back and tamed, almost unattainable.

_It must just be someone with a similar… a patient, a…_

He felt a hand on his shoulder, one that was almost imperceptible. If he hadn't been intoned that moment he'd have brushed it off – a patient trying to bug him or even just someone nudging him by accident while walking down the hall.

But he turned, and found himself looking into Cameron's eyes. His beautiful Cameron, no, wait, his beautiful…

"Allison," he gasped out, staring down at her. Her smile, wary and a bit nervous, spread across her face.

Cameron wanted to embrace Chase like nothing else she'd ever felt in her life. But she couldn't risk the rejection. She needed to know he still cared. Behind the shock in his eyes, she saw that he did – but there could still be somebody else. Who else? She felt a flush of jealousness go through her at that. Probably Thirteen – she was gorgeous, younger than Cameron and would probably be more forgiving of what Chase had done.

But that wasn't the issue, not now. She couldn't allow herself to be sidetracked by doubts, she needed to speak, now, make her mouth move. But she couldn't speak, and Chase had to fill the silence again.

"What are you doing here?" His voice went up an octave.

"I came back to see you," Cameron whispered. "I don't… I can't stop thinking about you. I think leaving might… _was_ a mistake. I need you." Chase swallowed.

"I don't know about this," he admitted quietly. "We have to… figure this out. I have to figure this out. This is really… sudden."

"That's okay," Cameron replied, smiling too widely with false cheer and hope, and wanting desperately to change the subject. At least Chase hadn't walked away. "Do you know what's going on with House? I ran into Cuddy in the hall and she said…" She paused a moment, then blurted, "that he needs a bone marrow transplant. She got me to go get tested." Chase tried to figure out which part of that surprised him the most, and he found he couldn't compute any of it. The only thing he could think of was the next valid medical question.

"Do you match?"

"Four-of-six," Cameron replied sadly, taking a step back and leaning against the wall. "I don't know how we're going to find a match. He doesn't have any siblings, his father's deceased so that ship sailed… Maybe his mother could be a match? But she might be too old…" She paused and looked at Chase. "It's too bad that House doesn't have any kids, right? They'd be the most likely match." Cameron paused after saying those words, and she stared at her ex-husband, who looked back at her with confusion. She shook her head, trying to shake the plan that was forming. It was a crazy plan. It would never, never work.


	4. Prologue 4

Prologue 4: The Plan

"I think you should be checked for skull injuries. Are you sure you didn't hit your head?" Cuddy asked, leaning back on her desk as she looked at Cameron, before staring past her to the closed door, which she half-believed House would walk through even though the man was lying on a hospital bed sleeping at this moment. "You can't seriously think this plan is going to work."

"But it could, I mean, look at this," Cameron slapped a copy of Newsweek with her hand. "There's a precedent."

"Yes," Cuddy retorted, "One with a lot of ethical gray-area, I thought you of all people would realize that! You are not seriously suggesting that House have a child for the sole purpose of _hopefully_ getting a donor match!"

"Well, what are his other chances? The registry? The chances of a match here are so much more likely," Cameron argued. "The child could give a marrow transplant at six months old, and they'd never have to know. The risks are minimal and…"

"Excuse me, who are you and what have you done with Allison Cameron?" Cuddy snapped in disbelief. "And do you think House would ever go for this? I mean, seriously?"

"If we explained the risks and benefits…" Cameron cut in, "The fact that with a transplant we could… we could cure him, Cuddy, or at least close to it." Cuddy looked back at Cameron and sighed, throwing up her hands.

"Okay then – who?" she asked. "Who would carry House's child if this crazy plan actually got underway?" Cameron shrugged.

"I could do it," she replied, trying to sound matter-of-fact. Cuddy's jaw dropped.

"You're a complete idiot," she blurted, before she could stop herself. "Even if House agreed, do you realize what you'd be signing up for? And what he'd be signing up for? You're not seriously still carrying some misguided torch for him." One hand moved to her hip and she narrowed her eyes. "This is some attempt to get Chase jealous, isn't it?" she accused.

"No, it isn't!" Cameron shot back, throwing her hands up in part-real, part-feigned outrage. "This is an attempt to save House's life. Why don't we ask him and he can make his own decision?"

"Well, you'll have some trouble with that," Cuddy responded, "Given that he hasn't talked at all to any of us since he arrived. I'm sure bursting in and announcing you want to have his baby will change that though, Dr. Cameron. Just go right along with that." Cameron turned and walked towards the door, but for once Cuddy couldn't quite figure the expression in her step. "You can propose it to him," she said finally, with a sigh. "I can't guarantee that he'll agree. Or even that he _should_ agree. But House is always one for exploring every option so… go for it."

"Thank you," Cameron said, but she didn't turn around and still kept her eyes on the door. Cuddy wished she knew what the former fellow was thinking, but it was impossible. Could she seriously be considering this, or was this some power play to try to reinsert herself back into PPTH after her long absence? What did she really stand to gain from this? "Where is he?"

"In Oncology," Cuddy replied. "Wilson's looking after him. Oh and Cameron?" Cameron turned.

"Yes?"

"You might want to renew your homeowner's insurance."

* * *

><p>Cameron had seen House at lows before. The Tritter debacle came to mind, first – that haggard look he'd had as he'd tried desperately to fight against withdrawal and the fact that his friends were<em> letting<em> him withdrawal and suffer until he took a deal he didn't want to take. That look of betrayal in his eyes.

She'd seen him like this, more recently, when he'd had that mental breakdown - right before she had married Chase, exactly. He'd been driven to a mental hospital by Wilson while she was involved in what was supposed to be the happiest day of her life. Maybe it should have been an omen. Then, House's eyes had been haunted, as if they were plagued with secrets that he couldn't bring himself to reveal, or that he was afraid to reveal.

His eyes looked different now than either of those times, than any time. She'd seen House hurt, angry, bitter and suspiciously close to actually happy, but she'd never looked in his eyes and seen… nothing, before.

He was awake, but he might as well have not been. He was lying back in the hospital bed and his eyes were focused on the ceiling. He hadn't moved an inch when Cameron walked in and, as Cuddy had mentioned, hadn't said a word.

"House?" Cameron called softly, walking around the side of the bed. "You in there?" She tried desperately to keep her voice playful, unconcerned, and with just a hint of playful mocking. "I came to see you 'cause I might have… an idea. Something you can do about your… condition." He didn't budge, and she reached out and placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. Other than a very slight flinch, there was no response. "House… I could…" She was losing her nerve now, now the plan seemed just as stupid as she'd thought it was when it had first entered her mind. But she couldn't go back now. "If you had a child, they could be a bone marrow match, and you could have a transplant." House's eyes drifted over to her and looked at her. That was, at least, a good sign. "But you'd need someone to do that," she continued, "And… I could do that. If you'd be okay with it. I mean… it's a crazy idea, I know, but it's one that just might work, and it's more… reliable, I guess, then waiting on the registry for a match because it's so unlikely and we don't have a lot of time and I… don't want you to die." Cameron's voice started to break. House's blue eyes narrowed and a look of surprised went over his face, seemingly breaking into his daze.

"Would this be a turkey baster deal?" House inquired quietly, "Or would we actually fuck?" Cameron swallowed before she shrugged in surprise.

"Um," she replied, "We could fuck… I have no problem with that."


	5. Prologue 5

**A/N: Okay, so I've been getting a lot of reviews stating that this story is not Hameron. If this chapter isn't Hameron enough for you - well, then, I deeply apologize. **

**Prologue 5: Easier Said Than Done**

Cameron tipped back her glass and ran her tongue along the edge, scooping the salt off the edge and taking a deep breath as she drank. She couldn't quite look at House, who was sitting across from her in silence; she knew if she looked at him she'd make one of her concerned comments about how much worse, how much older, he looked than when she had seen him last. But that had been a long time ago – two years, it must have been.

The thoughts going through House's mind weren't any more settled. As much as he'd managed to shrug off the request with a snarky affirmative, he was really beginning to have his doubts. He hadn't even really wanted to come back to PPTH, but the Antiguan hospital had insisted, and Cuddy was still in charge of his medical decisions if he was incapacitated, which he had been at the time.

So here he was, watching Cameron drink her third "perfect margarita", one with a lot of tequila, and nursing a bottle of bourbon. Trying not to think about how utterly wrong this plan was, if it even actually worked. How bad would it be to have a kid simply to basically use for spare parts? That wouldn't be a legacy he'd particularly wish upon anyone. It was like already being born into the scrap heap.

Cameron finally lowered her drink enough to look over into House's blue eyes; it let her swallow a moment and remind herself that this was House, who, if she didn't exactly trust, she liked. How did that make any sense, though? Years ago, she'd been head-over-heels in love with the man, but it had been like a schoolgirl with a crush on a rock star – if that girl had actually ventured into the rock star's bus and lay down with him, would she have trusted him? Probably not, and with good reason – such people tended to destroy the innocent.

Not that Cameron was innocent. Not anymore.

She tried not to think about the last time she'd had to get drunk to have sex. She looked at House and forced a smile.

"I hope our food's here soon," she offered by way of awkward conversation. He actually grinned slightly at that.

"Yeah, it'll be nice to get something that isn't hospital food, even if it is just Chili's."

"Hey, you chose the place," Cameron retorted with a real smile, this time. She tried to keep it from falling off her face.

_How much do you want Dr. House not to go to jail?_

Luckily, the arrival of the food snapped her out of that thought – that voice, crawling down her spine. All she needed was that and she would have the least erotic experience in her life.

House had ordered some sort of hamburger with what appeared to be jalapeños on top of it, whereas Cameron had ordered a set of quesadillas that she was beginning to regret. She nibbled on the edge of one and kept looking at House, who eagerly dug into his burger. A moment later, she placed her quesadilla back on the plate and cleared her throat.

"So, how are we going to do this?" she asked in a low voice.

"Well, when a man and a woman love each other very much…" House replied sarcastically, and Cameron rolled her eyes in response.

"I mean, just… You know. We haven't done this before. And I don't think either of us has… for this reason." She let out a little shrill laugh. "I mean, it's just all totally surreal."

_What would you do to keep Dr. House from going to jail?_

"You're telling me," House retorted, "A week ago I was in Antigua, and now I'm back in the cold." Cameron rolled her eyes again.

"I guess we're just going to play this by ear, then? Any requests?" She tried to make it sound as if it was nothing, that it wouldn't mean anything. Anything at all. It was just her helping House out.

_I don't think he could survive there, do you…?_

"Let's go," Cameron said a few moments later, when House had finished his burger. She called for the check and assured the waitress that nothing was wrong with the quesadillas, she just wasn't hungry.

A few moments later they were in a cab, heading for House's apartment, and Cameron wasn't sure that she could breathe. Why was she doing this? She couldn't really go through with this.

Cameron reached over the cane between them to slowly place her hand on top of House's, trying to acquaint herself with touching him – after so long, it was like something in a dream. She wanted this… or did she? She'd come back for Chase but here she was, ready to sleep with House. Was she going to tell Chase? He'd have to find out at least part of it eventually… if this worked.

If she didn't lose her nerve right here in the cab, with her stomach doing not somersaults but full handlebar routines complex enough to enter the Olympics.

It seemed like they'd been sitting there into eternity before the cab stopped in front of House's apartment and the driver announced in a loud voice, "Here you are, man!" before flicking the switch to the lights and seeming to temporarily blind both of them (Cameron started and House murmured a few choice expletives).

House reached into his pocket and retrieved his wallet, pulling out a $20 and handing it to the driver before wordlessly popping open the door and stepping out, dragging his cane behind him. Cameron followed, and no one spoke until they were safely behind House's locked door and standing in his living room.

"I want you to dye your hair back," House said by way of greeting, and Cameron stared.

"Why?" she asked, and he shook his head.

"Amber," he murmured simply, and Cameron understood.

"Okay, well… I assume you don't have hair dye lying around?" It came off a little more flippant than she'd intended – but at least it gave her a reprieve for a few moments longer.

* * *

><p>The next thing Cameron knew, they were cutting through the lawn around House's apartment and heading for the corner drugstore to purchase brown hair dye. Cameron found herself giggling as House weaved slightly on the grass, and she prepared herself to grab him off the ground if necessary, though she wasn't sure that she'd have the strength while intoxicated. She felt a rush that surprised her now, and House was grinning widely and drunkenly as Cameron began to wonder if they'd even know how to make their way back to the apartment.<p>

Cameron had to sort through a whole aisle of products before she found the one she wanted. It wasn't that easy when the labels were beginning to blur.

Somehow, they got back to the apartment and when they were inside again, Cameron walked into House's bathroom with a grin.

"Should I sit in the tub and just let you do your thing? Have you done this before?" she teased. House shook his head.

"You're the first. If it turns out green, well, I can tell everyone I slept with the Incredible Hulk."

Cameron laughed hysterically.

House pulled on the pair of plastic gloves and squirted the dark brown dye, which looked black, into his hands. He reached forward and ran his fingers gently through Cameron's hair, never having realized quite how soft it was before. He traced little lines and maybe even words and he wondered vaguely if he could write a measure on her head, maybe something like _House was here_. Because soon, he would be.

His hands knotted in her hair again as he rinsed it, and wrung it out as well he could because he'd never bothered to invest in a blowdryer – Cameron looked a little like a combination of a drowned rat and a model on Baywatch.

"Well, since we're here already, do you want out of that wet shirt?" he asked, leering slightly. To her surprise, Cameron laughed again.

"What a great pick-up line… Well, sure… But I'll regret this in the morning if you missed a huge spot," she teased, and reached down to pull off her shirt, tossing it into the corner of House's bathroom. "Wouldn't you rather the bedroom?" She gestured. "I mean, your leg." House considered this a moment; he was intoxicated to the point that although his leg hadn't stopped hurting, it wasn't a quite present thought in his mind.

"Sure," he replied and limped over to the bedroom, with Cameron following and wishing she hadn't been quite so forward; it was a little weird to be walking around House's apartment in just her black lace bra.

House sat on his bed and Cameron next to him.

"You sure you want to do this?" he asked quietly. She nodded.

"It's now or never," she replied.

"This is crazy."

"Shut up." Cameron turned and pressed her lips to his, leaning against him and trailing her fingertips down his shirt to unbutton his pants, reaching inside and trying to go on autopilot because this was just too weird to be sleeping with House.

But that hadn't stopped her so far.

House's hands were on her shoulders now, above her breasts, and without letting himself think about how utterly wrong this was, he reached around and unsnapped her bra strap, smiling nervously as it fell to her knees. She kicked it on the bed and smiled back at him, nodding, and he leaned in, gently nipping at a spot above her left breast.

"Oh, God, House," Cameron groaned out, trying not to think of how weird it was that she was trying to get pregnant by someone who she was still calling by his last name. She wished she could just shut off her brain, it was all just too…

Now House's mouth was on her nipple and finally her brain really was shutting off and she couldn't really think anything other than begs and pleads, some of which were successfully coming out of her mouth.

Somehow her pants ended up in the corner of House's room and she wasn't entirely sure how. Somehow she moved to let House lay on his side while she swallowed hard and brought herself down on him, closing her eyes as she felt him inside her and digging her nails into his back. She could hear him groan out, but mostly he was silent – she filed this away with curiosity as she had thought House would have said something but he just laid there and thrust, not disinterested but seemingly as caught up in the surreal contours of this scene they'd created as she was. She felt bad for being the one to moan, to call his name when she came, because she worried it'd break the mood, destroy everything… but somehow it didn't.

Somehow just as quickly as it had begun, it was over and she was lying across him in a heap, closing her eyes and drifting off. She knew that she'd wake up with a hangover and dark brown hair… and maybe regrets… and maybe the beginnings of a very successful plan.


	6. Week One

**Week One – Morning After**

There were few stranger places Allison Cameron had awoken than under the arm of Dr. House. Even when she'd wanted this more than anything else in the world, she had never been able to quite picture it. House did seem, after all, the kind of guy to run off in the night – okay, perhaps not run, but limp away.

Cameron supposed that the reason he hadn't was because this was his own home. There would be nowhere to escape to.

She looked over him and if she hadn't heard the words from Cuddy, she wouldn't believe that he was really sick. She still wanted to believe that maybe it was just a mistake, or maybe another weird plot of House's, faking cancer yet again and she'd somehow gotten drawn into it. She decided that she would much rather have been had yet again than have to cling to this as a reasonable chance for House's survival.

House's eyes were shut tightly, and he was sleeping in an awkward position. She moved slowly, not wanting to wake him – wondering just how much sleep he ever actually got, considering his leg. She cursed herself, wishing this desire to just… wrap her arms around House and protect him from the world would just go the way that it needed to. Why had she come back for Chase but found herself sleeping with House – noble reasons or not?

"House," Cameron whispered, nudging him gently. He didn't budge, and she worried for a moment that somehow, sleeping with her had either been so good or so bad that it had somehow killed him. But a few moments later she saw one blue eye slowly slip open, and then the other.

"Cameron?" House mumbled.

"Hey. How are you holding up?" Cameron inquired. She didn't know what to do. Should she cuddle him, make sure he's okay, ask for another go around, try and slip out now without saying another word? What was the protocol for sleeping with your – albeit former – boss?

"Good," House mumbled again. "Do we have to be anywhere?"

"No," Cameron replied, remembering that first of all, it was now a Saturday, and second of all… well, she had no idea if House was even coming back to work at PPTH, and she didn't really feel it was immediately appropriate to ask.

"Then I'm going back to sleep," House said, stealing more of the blanket.

"Me too," Cameron echoed quietly, and curled back up to House. This was certainly weird. This really wasn't normal.

But for right now, for this second at least… This was somehow okay.

* * *

><p>"House… and Cameron?" Wilson raised an eyebrow and tried not to sound as jealous as he felt. "And you told Cameron this idea was absolutely insane, right?"<p>

"Yes, I did… and she insisted on it anyway. And House… agreed. I don't know why. He's as crazy as she is," Cuddy replied, shaking her head.

"She knows the chances of a match are still less than a sibling match, and that even _that _isn't certain?" Wilson pressed.

"Yes, she does," Cuddy said again. She shrugged and slammed the drawer of her desk shut, trying to keep her emotions under control. All of this, at once, was just too much. And by the end of this week, work was supposed to begin with her house repairs. She didn't need all of this right now… Or maybe she did. Maybe each individual crisis was a welcome escape from the mounting multitude of _other _crises.

"But she's choosing to go with this ridiculous plan anyway, and if she does get pregnant she ends up having House's child and… what? Does she think House, with or without leukemia, is really up to raising a child?"

"Don't rant at me, Wilson," Cuddy retorted. "I know it's crazy. Cameron probably knows it's crazy, too. But I guess she just wants hope. She loves him… And don't you?" Wilson looked at her, unsure of what to say. What exactly did she mean? Love as in, as a friend – which he certainly did – or love in a more… romantic sense?

Which he was certain he might.

"So do you," Wilson said instead. He didn't want to go there, not now – not when House's life hung so precariously in the balance. He wanted to see House, wanted to smile at him and assure him that everything would be okay, even if he didn't believe those words himself. Even if he was as utterly lost as he had been ever since House had run off after driving his car into Cuddy's living room; even if he still kept walking past House's empty office and wishing he'd hear the gentle tap of a cane in there.

"I did," Cuddy replied simply. She walked out of the room before he could ask her if she still did.

* * *

><p>"Cameron's back," Chase blurted out as he looked up from his chair at Foreman, who was again in the boss' spot, seemingly kind of like a child playing House – literally.<p>

"She is?" Thirteen inquired, raising an eyebrow. "Why?"

"For me, apparently."

"Can we get back to the case?" Foreman asked impatiently. "Twenty-six year old female, has had trouble walking and talking… No one can diagnose her." He gestured to the white board. "Chase, do you have something to add, or should we keep discussing your old girlfriend?"

"Ex-wife," Chase corrected, a flush of anger flying to his cheek. "And I wasn't hogging the conversation, I was just saying…" He threw his hand up. "Auto-immune."

"Seems probable," Foreman replied, and wrote "auto-immune?" on the whiteboard.

"Could be a parasite," Taub suggested. He looked over at Chase. "Is she back for you, or for House?"

"Given that House isn't here and is in some… somewhere, probably hiding out in Mexico, I'd say not," Chase retorted.

"Actually, House is back," Foreman corrected. "He was in the hospital a few days last week. Surprised you didn't notice, since your nose is usually affixed to his, shall we say, posterior…"

"Oh, shove it, Foreman," Chase snapped, standing up.

"What a proactive step, Dr. Chase," Foreman said. "Get her started on meds for the parasites."


	7. Week Two

Week Two – Where Do We Go From Here?

By the next week, Cuddy and Wilson had stopped discussing Cameron, but not stopped discussing House. They worried about him constantly, and even when he was not the direct subject of conversation, all roads appeared to lead back to him as every story, every reminiscence, every concern seemed tinged with his influence.

Cuddy considered, as she played her fingers over the touch tone buttons of her cordless phone, whether she ought to maybe consider asking him to come back to work. It was a bad idea, the worst – and yet maybe a good one. She couldn't decide. Things with House had so often been gray and they had turned grayer. She could not hate him as she wanted to, the necessary hate when a relationship turns toxic.

She pushed the thought to the back of her mind as she dialed another construction company, trying to get the best estimate for the best work. Maybe it didn't matter – she made enough as Dean to cover pretty much any price they could ask, but it was the principle of the thing – she hadn't asked to have her crazy ex-boyfriend drive into her home, it wasn't as if this was voluntary remodeling on her part.

Maybe she should make the most of it, she considered – maybe this would be the time to invest in a nice new patio or nicer windows (or maybe much smaller windows so that people cannot easily look into the house). Maybe this would be a blessing in disguise.

She doubted it.

Chase tried to get a hold of Cameron. He called her old cell phone number, but it had been disconnected and the new owner appeared to be a man who spoke only Pashtu and was getting tired of Chase calling him. He hadn't seen her again at the hospital, and he couldn't help but think that maybe she had thought better of her idea and decided to go back to… wherever she had come from.

Even when he tried to shrug it off, he couldn't stop his brain from cycling, bringing her back to the forefront even when he had no desire for her to be there. He was thinking about Thirteen now, so often, and he had decided that he could be happy with her, he really could. He truly could, if Cameron would get out of his head for good. But every smile or touch from Remy reminded him of smiles and touches from Cameron. He was lost.

Thirteen was quickly getting irritated with the whole thing. At the moment, Chase was trying to talk with her, but was looking past her at the wall and thinking of Cameron.

"Foreman doesn't have to be such an ass," she continued, but underneath the comment was the implication that Chase didn't have to be one, either. He hadn't looked directly at her the entire conversation, and she was tempted to put her foot down and tell him that if he wasn't going to pay attention, then what was the point of doing this? If she had wanted closed off and impossible to reach, she could have stayed with Foreman. At least he wouldn't be comparing her to Cameron.

House didn't talk to Cameron for that week, either. The whole thing seemed like a mistake now – how could he have been so stupid? It was another idealistic Cameron plot, one that would never work. There was no way he would ask her to try again – hell, he hadn't even asked her in the first place, only acquiesced. She could keep her hare-brained schemes to herself from now on; now was no time for false hope. He needed to accept the inevitable, the bad news that maybe wasn't actually all that bad. He would be done.

He could just be done with all of it – with the lingering reminders of how wrong everything had gone with Cuddy. Maybe it was actually better this way; he wouldn't have to deal with wasting away and being a burden on her. He would have never come back if he had had a choice; he would have stayed in Antigua and spent his final days sipping tequila and dancing with half-naked girls, but they had shipped him back like a defective product.

But what if it did work? What if Cameron's crazy idealistic scheme worked halfway or part-way? What if the universe finally decided things in his favor for once in his life?

He didn't know what he would do then – it was, if anything, far scarier than it not working and him being able to write it off as a loss and say "sayonara" to the whole damn cruel world. What did he do if it worked? If Cameron had this kid, was he supposed to take care of it? Or was he supposed to just say "thanks", extract the bone marrow, and then continue on his way? Was he supposed to stay with Cameron out of gratitude? With her kid out of obligation? Was he supposed to just take the gift she was giving him and just leave?

Or should he just cut his losses now, leave in the night, and go somewhere else to die? Maybe Florida would be nice, or even just New York – somewhere with a lot of hookers and somewhere where nobody knew his name, where nobody expected him to come running back and solve a case when he thought he had finally gotten away from – from – from the only thing he really loved in his life. It was too damn twisted and complicated and hellish to understand, and it was only going to get harder if Cameron succeeded.

He didn't want her to succeed. He wanted her to see that the world was the crapsack place he had spent all those years telling her it was. He wanted to run off and die happy. Or die miserable. Or just die. Was that so much to ask?

House twiddled the Vicodin bottle between his fingers and sighed. _Life shouldn't be this difficult, but it is. Dying shouldn't be this difficult – but it's harder. _


	8. Week Three

Week Three – News

The next week, Cuddy considering calling the man who she had been on the… well, she couldn't exactly call it a date, or could she? On the whatever it had been exactly when House had driven his car into the living room.

But that was no real way to begin a conversation.

"Hello? Remember me? My ex may have instilled PTSD in you… Sorry."

No, it was safe to say that her love life was flatlined for the foreseeable future, but maybe that was okay. An ex with leukemia who had also left a hole in her living room was more than enough to deal with right now.

Instead, she filled her days with hospital work, trying not to wonder when and if House would be back to continue his treatment. It was House, after all, and there was no way to make the man do anything that he didn't want to do. Not to mention, if Cuddy asked him, he would just be more likely to resist.

So she just had to keep quiet, even if it was driving her up the wall – and it was. Was House just so selfish that he didn't care what his behavior did to other people? Was he really just the child who broke all the other kids' toys and then walked off like it was nothing?

She didn't believe that, ever, and she still didn't, even as this all rained down on her like a meteorite exploding in mid-air.

But what about this Cameron plan, now? She was fidgeting at not being able to question House directly, but what kind of answer could she even get out of him that wouldn't be full of sarcasm and bite? The only thing she could do would be to let House come to her, and let the rest of it sort itself out.

Cuddy reached over and touched the phone, ran two fingers over the sleekness of it. She could call House, she really could, but she wouldn't. She wouldn't.

Cameron made her way to the drug store. Maybe it was time to check – or maybe it wasn't. Maybe it had all been a stupid idea, a way to fill her little fantasies from before, and one that hadn't worked. She wasn't the same person she had been when she couldn't stop mooning over House, and there was nothing that she could do to change that, least of all sleeping with him.

But she couldn't deny the fact that she had.

And now she needed to figure out if, what was the phrase, it took? Or something…

She reached out on the rack and looked; there were about five competing brands. Was one better than another? They all did the same thing, didn't they? Was she cutting corners… oh, hell, she could do a blood test herself given that she was a doctor, this was just seeing if she would have any need to go that route.

Then why was she so damn nervous? It was just a stupid little stick that wouldn't even necessarily give the right answer.

She looked around, as if someone who knew her would just happen to be walking around the same pharmacy and would have nothing better to do than to spy on her. Then again, considering House, who knew?

She let herself wondering about House's new life, whatever it had become in the year since she had left. Had he hired new fellows she hadn't seen?

It didn't seem likely; House was a creature of habit. He hadn't ever replaced Kutner – then again, he'd only intended two and gotten permission for three, she remembered that. The number had evened itself out.

Then everything had happened with Chase and the dictator and she had left, too, the number had gone down by another.

Now, she was back – tipping the scales, if you put too much weight on a see-saw, someone goes flying.

Would it be her?

She walked up to the counter, conspiratorially shoved the test down and paid for it, imagining herself hidden in a trenchcoat and wearing a mask instead of in the nice blouse and skirt that she was donning. She held her breath until the transaction was complete, feeling that the cashier was going to say something… anything… about what she'd bought and then she would snap and it'd be a big scene.

Then she drove home. Drove home and took the test – _not__one__you__can__pass__or__fail,_her mind mockingly teased, _remember__now,__it__'__s__not__whether__you__win__or__lose,__it__'__s__whether__you__'__ve__reached__fertilization_– and then blinked at it.

Really, she couldn't remember what the signs meant, anymore – maybe they needed some kind of vocal box in these sticks that would just yell the answer at you.

But there was an answer, and she stood waiting for a few moments before she threw it down and swallowed, crossing her arms and wondering what in the fuck she was going to tell House.

"My dear Wilson, what brings you here?" House inquired as he peeked out through the door of his apartment.

"Uh, I can't show concern about my best friend who has leukemia?" Wilson retorted. "Has that gone out of vogue nowadays?"

"No," House responded, sticking out his cane. "But I get the feeling that you don't want to talk about the fact that I have leukemia. You want to talk about the fact that Cameron wants me to knock her up."

"Not quite so harshly as all that, but maybe," Wilson replied, sighing. "Please tell me you haven't taken her up on the offer."

"I can't," House said simply, opening his door a little wider. Wilson stepped in, made his way to the couch, and sat down as House joined him.

"Oh, well, thank you, that's a load off my back," Wilson told him, letting out a breath.

"No," House replied with a smirk. "I can't tell you that I haven't taken her up on her offer, because I have." Wilson stared at him, slackjawed and wide-eyed.

"Really, House? You slept with Cameron?"

"Years ago you would have been applauding this."

Years ago, Wilson would have. But times had changed… and this was a bad idea, everything about it. He could see disaster heading straight towards them, faster than a car going 200 miles an hour on a salted race track.


	9. Week Four

**Week Four: Something More**

The phone rang shrilly, shouted almost, at House as it broke him out of his sleep. He couldn't recall, a moment later, what exactly he had been dreaming about, but he could remember hands on his shoulders pressing him down and something next to his ear. On further recollection, it had been some kind of lizard, or a demon.

_Weird. _

He needed to stop watching movies on the Sci-Fi network before going to bed.

Shaking those thoughts from his head, he rose and snatched up the phone, pressing the "Call" button before placing it to his ear.

"Hello. Speak. It's House."

There was a long pause, and House nearly hung up the phone – it must have been a wrong number or maybe a bill collector, he considered, because he didn't recognize the number.

Just as his finger hovered over the "End" button, however, he heard a rasping voice pipe up, "It's Cameron."

"…Okay… do you want a prize?" House retorted, trying to keep his own discomfort about what they had done out of his voice. Did she regret it? Or … well, worse or better, did she want to do it again? What did she expect? Men never called women to pore over the intricacies of sex, now did they?

They just took it for what it was. Did the sensible thing.

"I'm pregnant."

House was speechless, for one of the few times in his life. Sure, it had been her plan all along, but it had been a stupid plan, one he had regretted after going along with it. Why had he gone along with it, after all? Was he really that lonely that he'd sleep with one of his former fellows? He was above that, wasn't he?

Apparently not. And now, it seemed, there was at least the chance of a combined House/Cameron child unleashed upon the world, and that… was terrifying.

He was about to suggest that she run off somewhere and nip this in the bud, hell, he'd even pay, when Cameron continued, "So the plan can work."

"I…" House began. "Cameron, this plan – no offense, but it's moronic. Even if this all works out and you don't… fall down a flight of stairs or get kidnapped by some crazy woman who wants a baby, both of which are strong possibilities, how do we even know whether this kid's going to have the right bone marrow type? This is like… breeding a kid for spare parts. Do you really want to be the one to tell them?"

"He's not for spare parts!" Cameron barked into his ear. "Regardless of whether or not this 'works', I want this baby! Jeez, House – and if you do die, let's be honest, yeah this whole thing is a long shot so if you do die, don't you want to live on?"

"No," House fired back without a thought. No, he didn't want a kid, who was really innocent of this whole thing, to grow up in yet another screwed-up family dynamic.

"Yeah, you wouldn't," Cameron goaded, "You're so bitter at the whole entire world you'd rather fade away. In your eyes, the world's destined to basically end anyway, isn't it?"

"Pretty much."

"Why'd you even agree if you're just going to be an asshole about it?" Cameron snapped at him. He could hear a rustling in the background but couldn't tell whether it was papers, or maybe an agenda book – doctor's appointments? Or maybe a script? Maybe it was all a test, one he'd gladly failed.

"I wanted a free piece of ass."

He expected Cameron to hang up the phone, or scream and call him an asshole again, tell him she was done with him.

Instead, she just gave a simple, shrill laugh.

"Well, you have nine months to come around. Get used to it. Try not to die in the meantime."

Then, she hung up.

House immediately dialed Wilson's number.

"Remind me never to let Cameron try and save my life again."

"What happened? Did she not call the next day? Did she not respect you in the morning?" Wilson teased.

"She's pregnant," House blurted.

"…Wow."

"Yeah, what do you say to that?"

"I never knew Cameron was so fertile," Wilson said, the smirk evident in his voice.

"You're horrible, Wilson. A horrible person."

"Okay, okay, what are you going to do?" House paused.

"I have no damn clue."

* * *

><p>"Well, at least my homeowner's insurance is covering some of this," Cuddy declared as she walked into her sister's living room and sat down in a big, red easy chair that felt way too awkward and far too much… not her house.<p>

"Hmm… Too bad you can't get a refund on the time you wasted on him," Julia retorted, looking up from the copy of _The Da Vinci Code _she was reading.

"Are you ever going to stop making smart remarks, or am I going to strange you before I head back to my house?"

Julia shrugged.

"Just because you don't like to hear the truth, Lisa, doesn't mean I'm going to stop telling you it. That's what sisters do."

"No, apparently they kick people when they're down," Cuddy snarled. "You know how much stress I'm under. Can't you just give it a rest for about ten minutes? I know that this whole thing with House was a mistake – it's not as if I'm currently warbling 'He Hit Me (And It Felt Like a Kiss)'."

"You might as well be. You need to accept that House is bad news, despite whatever idea you have to fix him, now or ever."

Cuddy placed her hands on her neck and groaned.

"Will you just stop? I don't want your opinion. I've never wanted your opinion on my love life. I just really, really do not want to hear it. I don't tell you how to live your life, Julia, so you really need to quit telling me how to live mine."

Even as the walls were set to be built, they were crumbling down. Then again, Cuddy was used to this by now. This was what life was like around House. She needed something more. But what?


	10. Week Five

**Week Five: Wheels Keep Turning**

One week passed into the next, and House was still left with no real idea of what to do. He could suggest, very firmly suggest, that Cameron get rid of it – maybe that would work. And someone could use the stem cells for science, to create a cure for something. Paralyzed people could walk again.

Then again, he would be dead by the time that happened, so what did he really care?

Or, better yet, he could just let Cameron do what she was going to do. Trying to talk sense to her had proven fruitless when he was her boss, what made him think it would be any more effective when she was his one-night-stand and now, (the thought made him wince) the father of her child?

House didn't do well with fathers; at least, he hadn't done well with his own (if he were even counting John House as his father, that was), and as far as he was aware, dysfunction had a clear tendency to be repeated ad nauseum throughout families. Why subject some kid to that? Sure, Cameron would probably be a halfway decent parent, but he didn't want to touch the subject with a ten-foot pole.

So, House decided as he lay back on his bed, staring out at the ceiling and considering, quite calmly, the fact that he would soon be dead (it was less anxiety to thing about that rather than the idea that there would be some parasite bearing his face), he decided he was not going to call Cameron.

But he might want to check his phone to see if she had called him again.

He fished out his phone and hit the "recent calls" button. He wasn't surprised to see that Wilson was there, three times in fact, and only slightly less surprised to see calls from both Cameron and Cuddy. _Cuddy._

He didn't want to go there.

He still loved her. Would always love her, maybe, even if "always" didn't have all that long to go. Then again, if "always" was only a couple of months to a year, maybe that was far less pathetic than spending the next twenty years thinking about the one who'd gotten away.

After all, what good was any of it if he let it turn into another Stacy situation? Where he sat on his hands, refusing to connect, thinking about what could have been? Listening to Wilson tell him to move on already as he shook his head?

Maybe it had been better that he had smashed through every hope of reconciliation with Cuddy, shattered every last bit of false hope.

With reluctance, he hit the button to listen to his voicemail.

"House, it's Wilson. Well, you already knew that. Call me back."

"House, really. It's… oh, you already know who it is. Call me back."

"I'm starting to really want to give up on you. Call. Me. Back. Needless to say, this is Wilson."

"Hey House, this is Cuddy. We need to speak about your… treatment. And everything."

"House, it's Cameron. Just calling to see how you are. And where your head is at about all of this. I know it's all pretty sudden, trust me, it's sudden for me, too…"

House hit the "7" button.

"Message deleted."

* * *

><p>Cameron had thought up a million ways that she could break the news to Chase, but none of them seemed any better than the one before it. She would have to figure out <em>something<em> to tell him, though, because he was standing in her apartment, on the stoop. She half-expected him to be holding flowers. Apology flowers. "Sorry I killed a man" flowers.

She supposed she could return the favor with "Sorry I'm pregnant by House" flowers.

"Hi, Chase," she murmured, opening her door further. "Come in."

When he was all the way in the door and it had shut, he put his hands at his sides and side.

"Listen, Allison… I really need to talk to you."

"Okay?" Cameron inquired. Maybe Chase would lead off with something so awful that her own comparison would seem miniscule in retrospect. She could always hope. Maybe he had slept with House, too – she curled up her nose at the unwanted mental image. That was one experience she really did not want to find out they had in common.

"I've been… thinking about you… your coming back. And I don't… I want to try. If we can try. I just don't know. Maybe it's been too long but I'm having… all kinds of feelings and… ugh, Allison, you know I don't really like talking about this sort of thing. But I want to give it a go if…"

That hadn't been what she had wanted to hear. Not at all. She was suffering until she cut him off and simply blurted it out.

"I'm pregnant. By House."

Cameron was pretty sure that she had actually literally heard a pin drop. Chase said nothing. She could say nothing else.

All she could follow it with was, "We aren't… together," like that made it any better.

She had thought Chase would turn and walk away, stalk off and never speak to her again, and that was better and worse than what he did, which was just stare, as if he was trying to look at something that always seemed to be just in the corner of his eye.

He moved, like he was floating, until he sat down on Cameron's bed. His head cocked slightly to the side, and he opened his eyes, then closed them. He did this a few times.

Cameron was finally able to speak.

"To try for a match. A bone marrow match."

Chase looked like he didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

"I planned it. But I didn't plan it. I didn't… I came back for you, Chase."

That was when he rose off the bed and walked towards the door.

"Where are you going?" she called, but all she heard was the door slam. She could tell that wherever he was going, he must not have even taken a second to look back.


	11. Week Six

**Week Six: Split Asunder**

Chase lay down on his bed, staring up at the ceiling and trying, with all his will, to ignore the fact that his alarm had just gone off. Another day, another case. Cuddy, in her infinite wisdom, had decided to reinstate House, as of three days ago.

He had written his resignation letter over and over in his head, but couldn't really commit it to paper. Maybe he was a masochist, maybe that was it. Maybe some deep-seated, fucked-up part of him enjoyed House tormenting him, leaving him, letting him gain the vaguest foothold of responsibility and then ripping it away.

It had to be that.

He walked into the bathroom, stripped, and stepped into the shower, trying not to be waylaid by thoughts of Cameron's return. Instead he thought of Thirteen – Remy – and her slim body, her "come hither" lips, the way she'd fought him that night that he'd caught her treating her former cell mate. Thirteen was dangerous, the anti-Cameron, dark and feisty where Cameron had been an irritating pillar of morality.

_Yes, that's right, think of Thirteen._

He let his hands wander downward, as if to imprint the message further, that it wasn't Cameron he wanted and that if Cameron wanted to go fuck off with House, get pregnant by House, then what the hell did he care? She didn't even factor in, anymore.

The fingers interlaced over one another, pumped and prodded, stroked and manhandled. Chase would forget; he wouldn't remember. He'd know. He'd remember all the mistakes and wrong steps and remind himself that those were all the reasons why he and Cameron didn't belong together, had never belonged together.

He and Thirteen didn't belong together, either, not in a "true love" kind of sense. But for a time, for a distraction, until he forgot about Cameron and she forgot she was dying, maybe that was the answer. Maybe life was just a serious of distractions and it was all a matter of figuring out what the better, more worthwhile ones were.

He remembered House punching him in the face during the whole horrid Tritter debacle. He remembered every mocking comment, every time the knife was dug in that much deeper. He thought of how House had known Chase's father was dying when Chase himself didn't even know.

He stroked harder. He had to wash it away, every last vestige of wanting to hang on to Cameron.

How Cameron had forgiven House's every fault, even applauded it as vulnerability but couldn't forgive fault in Chase, couldn't give him another chance. Blamed House but still loved him, didn't blame Chase but left him.

Chase bit his lip hard enough to make it bleed. He stroked one last time, felt the damn burst, felt himself give way. He tried to picture a new beginning as the mix of soap and come and sweat whirled around in his drain.

But he knew he'd only be fooling himself.

* * *

><p>The case this week was some fifteen-year-old prostitute with what looked like skin cancer but apparently wasn't. If Cameron had been on the case, she'd have taken some time to put her hand on the girl's shoulder and cry with her.<p>

But Cameron wasn't on the case.

A whole lot of compassion wasn't forthcoming from any of the other doctors on the case, either. Foreman had on the face he usually did regarding the down-and-outs, a kind of forced neutrality which seemed to cover a deep layer of resentment. Taub just seemed to want to get the whole thing over with. Thirteen was vaguely sympathetic but, as usual, guarded, and House had just used his third "Pretty Woman" joke.

Chase was probably going to stab himself in the face by the end of the day.

He ran the tests with a forced nonchalance, gave a few suggestions in the differential that House didn't mock entirely, and kept his comments to himself for the most part. The more focused he was on the case, the less his thoughts would run to Cameron and how the whole thing was fucked beyond belief.

At least House hadn't mentioned it, yet, which led Chase to wonder if he actually didn't know yet, somehow, or if the whole situation made him even more uncomfortable than it made Chase.

Either way, Chase didn't particularly care. He just wanted to do his job, save the girl and go home. Drowning his sorrows in alcohol was, as usual, out, but he could always turn on a mindless comedy (no romantic comedies, not that he ever watched them anyway) and sleep to the dim light of the TV screen. Alternatively, he could dig up some fairly depraved internet porn and try to undo any of the karmic goodwill he might have inherited during his time in the seminary.

That idea worked, too.

Unfortunately for Chase, the patient – Diana Rodriguez, her name was, apparently dubbed "Lady Di" by a couple "friends" who were probably fellow prostitutes – decided that of all the doctors to unburden her heart on, he should be the one.

And so he spent the better part of the evening listening to her tale.

It left him feeling guilty for being so angry at Cameron. Not guilty enough to forgive her, or to forgive House.

But guilty enough to make him want to stop dwelling on it.

Maybe he would just forget, and the forgiveness could come later.

He hoped so. It was like a rock in his heart that he was carrying around, and it was weighing him down. Or a burning ember, maybe. Some part of a volcano that broke off. The volcano named Dr. House, that crashed into and erupted over everything in its path.

Diana Rodriguez looked up at him with a sad smile.

"You look like you've got your secrets, too," she said.

She was the first person to see right through him in all of this. Chase sighed.

"It's a part of being human," he said simply. "I need to draw some more blood, now."


	12. Week Seven

**Week Seven: Pieces**

In the course of a half a sandwich from Wawa and an order of Jalapeno poppers, Cameron decided in favor of calling House ten times and decided against it six and a half times.

She figured that majority ruled.

If she was going to go through with this – and now that it was seven weeks in, she figured she ought to be – she needed to at least know where he stood. Whether or not he'd be willing to be on board at all.

Not to mention, what exactly she was going to do if he weren't on board.

Cameron had always wanted children, after all. Not in the same way that she'd seen Cuddy want them, with a kind of sense of something having passed her by in the wind of her success at her career, having to abandon one life to obsess over another, but she had wanted them nonetheless.

This hadn't been how she's pictured it all those years, however. First, with her husband. She had held on to the belief that somehow, she could keep him alive through the idea of passing on his DNA to a child, albeit one with a rather unusual method of conception.

Then, there had been Chase. She had wanted a life with him, but she hadn't been able to leave the old one behind; not without a push. That risk hadn't really paid off, had it?

Or maybe it had. She held the cell phone in her hands, turned it over, even took out the battery and put it back in to better stall for time.

Did she love House?

It was one of those big questions. A keynote question. Too hard a question, and one she probably should have asked before coming up with this ridiculous plan, before sleeping with the man.

She used to know, after all, didn't she?

She used to know.

But back then she had known a lot of things. Or thought she knew.

She let herself dial the number. He answered on the third ring.

"Cameron," was how he answered, and it was all that was said for a long while. She thought that he had hung up, or maybe lost the connection. Or maybe he was hoping that she would hang up, that this would all go away – this plan, the leukemia, what he'd done to Cuddy, everything.

She didn't know.

There was a lot she didn't know these days.

"I want to see you," she breathed, blurted into the phone before she could think better of it.

There was a longer pause. She was again afraid that he'd hung up, that he couldn't be bothered to hear this. After all, why would a dying man want to hear this?

Another dying man she'd fallen in love with.

"When?" he asked instead, but she could tell the real question was "why?"

"Tonight. At eight. We need to talk."

He hung up, then, and she wasn't sure whether that signaled agreement, or that he was just done with the whole thing.

She wasn't sure of anything that had to do with House.

* * *

><p>When House appeared at her door, she couldn't help but take stock. He looked so pale, so… some kind of dead inside. It shook her to the core.<p>

There was a buried hope, a desperate hope inside her that wanted to believe that she – and maybe this child – could relight something inside of him that had been snuffed out long ago, embers that were only vaguely smoldering these days.

She just had to figure out the right words. The right words in a perfect order. An impossible Rubix cube.

A puzzle House would enjoy.

But there weren't the right words. Not really. Only the right actions.

She lifted her hand to his cheek and cupped it, stared at him and said something – even if she wasn't quite sure what, with her eyes. Her chin tilted up and she pressed their lips together, her mind screaming after her that she would be rebuffed, no doubt be rebuffed.

But House said nothing. He didn't kiss back, not at first, but he didn't break the embrace, either. Slowly he eased into it, his arms moving to her waist.

It didn't last nearly long enough. If they'd fallen back into bed, if they'd stayed like that all night, then, hell, they'd never have to talk about this from a practical, logical standpoint.

Cameron realized how much she enjoyed just kissing House. It was a strangely chaste preference from a woman who had slept with him, but maybe that was why she liked it so much. It was safe.

When they had split apart, she looked at him.

"I'm going to do this whether you like it or not," she told him, and he glared.

"What gives you the right?"

Cameron locked eyes with him.

"You're being an idiot."

"You may want to check in the mirror," his voice was low, and it sounded as if he'd tried to inject it with as much fury as he could muster, but the energy just wasn't there.

"This is a second chance."

"Does it look like I want one?"

Cameron glared.

"Self-pity doesn't suit you, House. If anyone else did it, you'd call them an idiot."

"Self-righteous pontificating doesn't suit you… Oh, wait, yes it does."

Cameron glared at him again. She tried to figure out what to do next. She wanted to scream, to throw things, to tell him to climb out of his own ass and listen to her for once. She wanted to tell him she was done with him, didn't know why she'd ever gotten started with him in the first place.

This had all been a mistake, after all, so she would be completely within her rights to do any of those things. Maybe go back to Chase, or maybe leave without a forwarding address.

She didn't do any of those things. Instead, she tilted up her head and kissed him again.

And he kissed back.


	13. Week Eight

Week Eight: Fixed and Broken

Allison Cameron had made a lot of mistakes in her life. Things had never been perfect, at least not at the level she had always hoped for. In the eyes of her parents, she could have always done that little bit better, gotten that A instead of a B+, and she had agreed. It hadn't stopped there, though; when that had faded away and her parents had been less invested, it had been moral dilemmas. At her part-time job, she had been the one to walk back in the rain when someone had left the store unlocked, or who went door to door to find some little boy's puppy. It just became who she was.

Maybe this was all a mistake. After all, she'd thrown away what she had had with Chase for this. Again. She remembered how after Kutner's death, she'd canceled that vacation, and Chase had been suspicious that it had been to babysit House.

She'd told him he was wrong, then.

But now here she was, babysitting House in the worst way, giving something that she was almost certain she could never get in return. What was she on about, even? And why didn't it worry her all that much?

She was lying in his bed, yet again, trying desperately to figure it all out. It would have been helpful, of course, if he had been lying in the same bed. As it was, he wasn't. He was off at Wilson's, doing… whatever it was that House did at Wilson's, and Cameron was beginning to figure that she wasn't going to see him for quite some time and that she ought to just get a move on already.

If this was some cheesy romance novel, she reminded herself, he would burst in at just that moment, sweep her up in his arms and stop her from leaving.

She paused. Counted to ten.

_Nope, still no House._

Maybe she should have gone looking for him, but she was too tired. Everything they'd said about pregnancy being incredibly tiring seemed to have been accurate, though she thought that maybe it'd be less tiring if it had been Chase, the way it was supposed to be. The way it'd seemed to be pre-ordained when they'd stood up at the altar and exchanged vows; Chase wouldn't die, Chase wouldn't leave her with nothing but frozen sperm. Chase would always be there.

He still was there. She was the one who'd left. Because he'd changed; that was what she had told herself at the time. He had changed too much, was willing to bend morality and the rules too much, and wasn't the man she thought she knew, hoped she knew.

But in reality, if she had left because Chase had changed, she had come back because she had changed. Her career in Chicago had gone well, she knew all the right people and made all the right money. But each night she had gone home to a quiet one-bedroom apartment overlooking the el and had ached for something more. Some sound of footsteps beside her, the feeling of another's warmth next to her in bed.

When she first heard the footsteps, for real, she thought maybe she was imagining them, imagining it, the little sound of rat-tat-tat against the wooden floor, the clump and clatter of a cane.

"House?" she called, quietly, as if not to break the spell, as if not to let in the reality of how damaged they both were and how ill-fated this whole relationship was. If it even was a relationship at all. But for that second, as she called, she was young again, naïve again, eager to help and to save and to hold.

"Cameron." His voice appeared before he did, and it was a statement, not a question, as if he was deducing her rationale for being here still. He must have been doing internally, for he followed up, as if in mid-sentence with, "The only reason I can think of is that you can have sex without worrying about getting pregnant."

Cameron kicked her feet off the bed. She smirked, but he couldn't see it yet; he was still at the far end of the room.

"That's the best you could come up with? No digs about how I have to fix everyone?"

House shrugged.

"Too tired."

"Where were you?"

"What are you, my mother?" House snapped. "Porn shop. There was a 69% off sale." Cameron rolled her eyes.

"Seems like you're doing better," she replied dryly. "I see a little of the old House shining through."

"Until the day I die."

The words cut Cameron unexpectedly. Maybe until that sentence, so sarcastic and so typical House, she hadn't really, truly accepted it was a possibility. After all, House always made it out. House always got away at the end, like the Roadrunner slipping away from Wile E. Coyote.

The idea that he could actually die, be gone – poof – like that, was terrifying. Cameron didn't believe in God, but she had always believed in House, even when he had seemed to be actively working against it.

Her mouth was dry and she tried to come up with words, words that worked. Words that made some kind of fucking sense. There weren't any. But they were connected, whether House liked it or not. Whether Cameron liked it or not. If he went down, she went down. Together.

"Won't be so soon as you think," she whispered.

"Oh, yeah," House retorted. "Because you're carrying the second coming and all."

Cameron snorted.

"Second coming of you? I sure as hell hope not. If that's true, I'm giving it up for adoption."

"So it's an 'it', now? That's curious. Thought you were baby-obsessed." Cameron shrugged.

"Don't know what 'it' is, yet," she explained. "When we know… Well…"

House smirked.

"What about our cases? What if it's both? A he-she?"

Cameron glared at him.

"First of all, I don't think 'he-she' is a proper term in the medical community. Secondly, that's my kid you're talking about. I don't care if you're sick or not, I'll sock you in the balls."

She saw the ghost of a smile creep across House's face.

"That's the Cameron we know and love."

"Yeah, yeah," she replied, and put the pillow over her head. This was going to be the longest nine months of her life.


	14. Week Nine

**Week Nine: Blood is Thicker Than Water**

Cameron began to dream about her child. Not in a specific sense, as if she saw the baby's face or its eyes or even knew its name, but in a vague, water-color kind of way, like a blurry painting she was supposed to pretend to know the meaning of. A Rorscach test.

In her dreams, she was walking along a beach, with no shoes, holding this child's hand. Their grip was tight. There were waves in the distance, and seagulls, too. Maybe it was the shore she was at; she never had time to go to the shore when working for House. Her parents had asked, though, when she had first moved to New Jersey, they'd asked her when she was going to the shore.

She was walking somewhere, but she had no idea where. Out into the sunset, she supposed, but there was no end in sight.

And then the waves started to get higher. Started to sweep over them both, threaten to drown them both. Cameron tried to hold on to the baby but everything was slipping, everything was too slick and the current was too rough.

She turned her head by force and looked to see House standing on the beach, just watching, cane in hand like he wanted to help but was unable, was rooted to the spot.

She sprung awake gasping and crying, twitching. She was twisted in the sheets and sweat was all over her forehead.

Cameron climbed out of bed and groaned. Great. She hoped this stuff wasn't going to be happening for another seven months. That wouldn't make work any easier; she got such limited sleep as it was and now it was going to be interrupted with that kind of business?

Her life just couldn't get any worse right about now.

But as she dressed, she was surprised to find her heart feeling decidedly light. There had been something in it, something in having that hand in hers, that must have done that.

It was odd. She figured there had to be something in the hormones, in that would deal, that had led to this. She didn't want to look for some kind of philosophical idea about the "glow" that she was supposed to be projecting outward. As much as she had felt for House in her past, in her more naïve days, this whole process served a practical purpose. There was no need for her to get caught up in nuances and assume that it ought to be more than it was.

There wasn't any time to just sit around, anyway, and just figure it all out. She had work to do. She couldn't let this get in the way of everything else she had to accomplish. On which purpose, if she was really going to stay in Princeton, at least for now, she was really going to need a job. She had subsided on her savings for a little while, but that wouldn't last her forever, especially with doctor's visits and other baby-related expenses.

She reached up and rubbed her head. She hadn't really thought this out, had she?

Cameron could always ask House for her old job back. Of course, she could do that. She could even go to Cuddy about it and see if she could intercede with House. But with Chase there? And Cuddy didn't seem to be House's biggest fan at the moment, either, nor Cameron's, so the likelihood she'd be doing either of them any favors right now was a slim one.

Neither of those were the biggest reason, though.

The main thing was that she didn't want to stand around and watch House die, watch time go through the hourglass and fade away.

* * *

><p>She began to sort through her CVs, getting rid of references who were no longer relevant (she deleted House's name and re-pasted it four times before deciding to keep it) and changing her font size and headings color. Anything to be a little more appealing. Could a piece of paper really tell a hospital what they needed to know? If they had wanted to see Cameron at work, they should have seen her at work, saving lives, trying to give House a little more morality and a little less incentive to run over hospital ethics with a bulldozer.<p>

She sighed. Admittedly, if any other hospitals knew half the stuff she had gotten mixed up in – or, hell, the real reason she'd left Princeton-Plainsboro in the first place – they would throw out her application without a second glance, no matter how good a doctor she was. So maybe the answer was just to appear normal, nonthreatening. A good ER doctor, one that could smile, be pleasant, have good bedside manner and get the job done. Maybe that was her place, back in the ER.

It hadn't been nearly as exciting as working for House, but it hadn't been a tenth as heart-wrenching, either. It was so often open and shut cases, bloody noses and people with a nasty flu and ear infections. There wasn't the same mystery, but she also knew…

Knew what were lost causes right off the bat.

There was enough mystery right in front of her; hell, right inside her. Growing. She'd always wanted kids, but like everything…

What was she even planning to do once this one came into the world? How would she treat them? Would she love them automatically? That had to be how it worked, you looked at this tiny person and they were yours and you just loved them.

Or would she just see the kid as a means to an end? Had she become that callous from being around House too long?

Was blood thicker than water? Would they be connected?

And shit, why did she have to figure these things out now? Why was it all hitting her in the face now? Couldn't she break them down, make them more manageable, fix them one by one, put them on a whiteboard and cancel them out if they were too complicated, maybe come back to them later?

But she had chosen this. She would just have to follow through. There was no way around it.


	15. Week Ten

**Week Ten: Don't Know What You Got 'Til You Lose it**

"You're quiet," Julia commented. Cuddy had informed herself that she might very well strike her sister if she dared to follow it up with a quip about "too quiet."

"I'm thinking about a lot," Cuddy replied. Her voice seemed adrift in the air, not at all the confident and competent voice that had taken down so many foes to reign victorious at Princeton-Plainsboro. But confidence, even to the Nth degree, couldn't have fixed this.

"By which you mean," Julia said, seeming to not even try hiding the disgust in her voice, "You're thinking about House."

"There's a lot to think about with House," Cuddy replied dryly. "The man…" She trailed off with a sigh. She couldn't really divulge House's confidential medical information, even though she wasn't his doctor. She had talked about House so many times before, with Wilson or the others, but somehow, this was different. This was something she needed to keep to herself. Instead, she followed, "He got somebody pregnant."

Julia's eyes went wide.

"My condolences to …. It isn't you he got pregnant, is it?"

Cuddy shook her head. "I can safely say that it wasn't."

"Was he cheating on you?" Julia pressed. "Is that what you broke up over? I had a friend, such a dear, she found out her husband had gotten another woman pregnant, only after she accidentally opened a bill in his mail and saw that it was for a carseat and baby formula. Poor girl had never even seen it coming."

Cuddy sighed.

"You just feel the need to sensationalize everything, don't you? No, this… whole situation began after the two of us broke up. No cheating."

"Well, then, he still moved on pretty quickly after you. Considering, after all, that he drove his car into your living room and could have killed you! After he was done with that, I guess he figured he was all ready to move on…"

"Julia…" Cuddy reached forward to try and grab her sister's hand, to calm her down. Because the more riled up she was getting, the less control Cuddy was beginning to feel she had in any of this damned, cursed situation. Cameron was having House's baby that she didn't even want, for such a far-fetched reason as this.

"Why do you even care whether someone is having House's baby or not?" Julia continued on. "I mean, it's not exactly like he was bursting with paternal instinct before."

"Because I love him." Cuddy had certainly not meant to say the words, or even to think them, and she regretted them with gut-crunching urgency the second she realized that they had escaped unbidden from her mouth. She realized with those words that some part of it, some part of it had to be jealousy. But jealousy for what? About what? What part of this bizarre screwed up situation was enviable in the least?

The words echoed over and over in Cuddy's mind. Nothing about that sentence meant anything good. It wasn't as if it was a new sentence; she had told House that she had loved him… for the first time, that first time that had gotten them together and then somehow it had turned into being all downhill from there, one problem after another… but if it had been only problems, if it had all been a trainwreck, well, Cuddy had had enough of those kind of relationships. Those were the easy ones to forget. House would never be easy to forget.

* * *

><p>Cameron was awoken to the rumble of her cell phone. She had set it to vibrate at some point in the night, and there it was, rat-tat-tat-ing against the desk she had left it on. She groaned. It had gotten harder to sleep, recently, much harder, and whoever was calling, she knew that she resented them for the simple offense of interrupting that precious slumber.<p>

And when she fished up the little hard piece of plastic and saw that not only was it Chase, but that she had four missed calls from him, she resented him even more.

She could not deal with him right now. After all, hadn't he been the reason that she had left in the first place? Hadn't he been the reason that she had left it all behind, left House behind? If she'd never gotten caught up with Chase, never fallen for Chase, then…

Well, what would it be? Would she still be pregnant now, somehow, under different circumstances, ones not nearly so conflicted, not nearly so screwed up? She was finding that which side was up was becoming a new and difficult concept. It was bad enough to feel like crap, as she slowly realized she was, but to be so utterly confused…

No one had ever told her that it would be like this. She hadn't been sure of anything ever in her life, but she was even less sure of it now. When she had married her first husband, she had naively thought… what had she thought? Could she even remember it, now, or was it all some fantasy she had woven together these days to look back and say that things were easier when she was younger? Or had she always been adrift, always clinging to the nearest thing with any faint hope of rescue?

Why had she chosen House? She hadn't chosen Chase so much – that had been an accident, a flight of fancy that got out of hand and somehow turned into something that resembled a fucked-up version of love. How did that work? Why was it all twisted in her head now? She knew the events but the reasons, the motives, they were all screwed up and wrong like a screwed-up game of connect-the-dots where someone hadn't followed the grid at all.

Maybe when her baby was a little older, it would play connect the dots game.

If it was ever even born. Maybe it didn't even exist except in Cameron's mind. Maybe she'd imagined it all.

She put a hand over her stomach and considered that. She'd seen enough movies like that. Movies where it was all in their heads. Where in the end, that was the twist. That none of it was even real and somehow that was supposed to make it all make sense. At the time, she hadn't understood it. What was the point, then, if none of it was real?

But now… Now, she was finding that just because it was real didn't mean that it made any sense either. Maybe one of the days coming up would bring a clue.


	16. Week Eleven

**Week Eleven: It's Complicated**

"I should go see House." Cuddy was talking to Wilson, but it was more as if she was talking to herself. He looked at her and cocked a concerned eyebrow, but didn't say anything, and so she continued. "I should go talk to him. Maybe I can figure out where this all went so wrong."

"Just a guess," Wilson ventured, "It went wrong about the time he drove his car into your living room?"

Cuddy didn't respond to that, but she knew it was right. They'd broken up before that, of course, but all of the second-guessing she had been doing had flown right out the window the moment he had pulled that stunt, the biggest and most damaging temper tantrum she had ever seen him pull, without regard for his or her own safety or any of it. But there was something else lingering there too, something she really didn't want to admit. Something that, if it were framed positively instead of as a character flaw or psychiatric illness, might be admiration. Being weirdly touched that she had hurt him enough for him to go so far. Hadn't she been telling him to show his emotions, to tell her what she felt?

But no, that was crazy. House was crazy – leukemia or not, House wasn't right, and he didn't have any place in her life now that she had a child. She hadn't had time for all of this craziness in the past and why should she have any time for it now? She would look out for him a little and hope that he beat the disease and didn't die, but apart from that, she needed to be done. She'd been charitable enough by not having him thrown in jail for what he'd done.

"Cuddy, maybe you should just take a step back from all of this," Wilson suggested. "I was the one who was rooting for you and House to get together. I thought that it would be good for him but maybe…" He trailed off.

"Maybe…?"

"Maybe I should be the one to go talk to him. I need to find out how he's dealing with this whole… Cameron situation. It's… no doubt made things more complicated." Wilson sighed. Cuddy looked at him, wondering if his stake in the situation had changed because of Cameron. He couldn't actually think that she could be more suitable for House? It would be a disaster for both of them, probably was a disaster already considering that obviously something had happened between them to result in this ill-advised pregnancy.

"Fine," Cuddy replied, picking up a clipboard and pretending to flip through it. "Go talk to him. But I can't put it off forever."

Wilson stood up and started to leave the room, wishing that he could. But House had always ended up being his responsibility in the end. He would never be able to escape it, whether House went to Antigua or Belize or the moon. Whether he lived… or whether he died.

* * *

><p>House was in the middle of watching Lip Service on Netflix when his doorbell rang. He had run out of episodes of the L-Word to watch and had gone out looking for similar shows, and had along the way discovered this gem of a Scottish series, with even hotter lesbians.<p>

He found himself pretty deeply invested in whether Cat was going to choose Frankie or Sam, and hoped he would find out before he went off to meet his maker.

Which, he liked to tell himself, he was handling just perfectly well.

House hit pause and stood up from his chair, taking his cane in hand and slowly sauntering over. He hoped it wasn't Cameron knocking at his door, because that wasn't a situation he felt like dealing with right now. It was also a situation that, as long as it wasn't right in front of his face, he could act like it didn't exist. So that's what he had been doing.

Maybe it was Dominika. Maybe they needed to do… something to help keep their green card marriage going. Maybe she'd like some popcorn.

He opened the door and sighed when he saw that Wilson was standing before him.

"Come in," he told his best friend dryly. "There's lesbians on TV."

Wilson rolled his eyes and walked inside.

"Listen House. You've really done it to yourself this time…"

"Oh, yeah. Sorry about the leukemia. I knew that was going to be a bridge too far… I'll have to scale it down next time. Why are you here, Wilson? I can do without a lecture right now… but I know that you're going to give me one anyway. It's your M.O."

Wilson sighed.

"No lectures. Just checking in to see how you're doing. A lot is going on right now, House…"

"No shit." House sat back down on his couch and picked up the remote.

"And you need to figure out how you're going to handle all of it. First of all, this whole situation with Cameron. I don't know exactly how you too got together but now… well, you don't need me to tell you that her being pregnant means that a lot of things are going to change."

"Oh, I know. I need to go out and get plenty of baby bonnets. I'll even set up a registry," House replied sarcastically. Wilson let out an exasperated sigh.

"You are incapable of taking this seriously, aren't you?" he snapped. "This isn't just one of your games or your bets, House! You drove your car into a woman's house and you got another woman pregnant! You're playing with people's lives here!"

"I'm a doctor. I play with people's lives all the time…" House replied with a smirk. "What else is new?"


	17. Week Twelve

**Week Twelve: Point of No Return**

"So you're really in this crazy scheme for the long haul." That was the first thing out of Robert Chase's mouth as his ex-wife sat across from him in the doctors' lounge of Princeton-Plainsboro. She had come in for an ultrasound and he had found her; somehow they had found themselves here, somewhere between talking to each other and sniping at each other, with Cameron not sure which she would rather have.

"I always was," Cameron replied defensively. "What are you talking about?"

"Well," Chase drawled, leaning his elbow against the arm of the chair. "Three months is the point of no return."

"You mean, if I was going to abort?" Cameron challenged, giving him a sigh. She should have known that he would be this argumentative, even if this had nothing to do with him, which it really didn't. Once this baby was born and House was better, she would… well, she didn't know what she would do. Maybe she would put the kid up for adoption, or… she could raise the baby as a single mother, because if the baby came out looking even remotely like House, that would ruin her chances with Chase now and forever, wouldn't it?

She hadn't really thought that part of it all through, maybe because this baby didn't seem like his or her own person yet. Right now, Cameron didn't even know if she was having a boy or a girl. She had gone to her own doctor, to see what was going on and everything, but they hadn't really been able to see much yet. The baby had seemed so small that it seemed like more just a part of Cameron than anything outside of her. Maybe she would have to wait until the kid started kicking to really come to terms with the whole thing.

Maybe she wouldn't even have to. She didn't hope for that outcome, but she knew that it was a possibility, and she also knew that if she miscarried she was going to cut her losses and not try again, say that it was a good shot and just move on. There was no way that she would want to go through this whole thing twice; it already had ripple effects that she hadn't counted on and if she got the chance to stop the whole plan right then, right now – well, she thought she would probably take it.

"I'm not trying to imply anything, Allison," Chase began, but Cameron shot him a glare.

"Oh, of course not," she fired back. "The fact is that this is the issue. This is a thing, this is, most likely, going to happen, unless nature gets in my way. So what are you going to do about it?"

"What am I going to do about it?" Chase inquired. "What are either of us going to do about it? You've conveniently landed us in a situation that is not very likely to get us back together…"

"Well, considering you seem to be more interested in sleeping with Thirteen…" Cameron fired back, "From what I've heard…"

"I'm not sleeping with Thirteen!" Chase fired back, far too quickly. This led Cameron to assess, quite quickly, that if he wasn't already, he was at least thinking about it, and she threw her hands up in frustration.

"You do know that if I wouldn't even be in this situation at all if I hadn't come back for you," she told Chase, rising out of the chair and instinctively and protectively reaching for her stomach. Everything was messed up, up to and including this child, but maybe that was wrong. Maybe this kid, who didn't even exist yet, was the only thing that made sense in the world at all.

"You can't actually be serious," Chase said to her, in a slow, incredulous voice. "You cannot be blaming the fact that you came back and decided to sleep with your ex-boss, not to mention my current boss, then turned around and said you were doing it for me… You can not really be trying to blame this on me? You were the one who left me in the first place! You're doing this all on a whim. How can I trust anything you say at all?"

"I'm doing something on a whim?" Cameron rounded on him. It hurt to be this angry; she could feel her whole body flushing, her forehead turning hot at it, but she didn't care. She was furious and she was going to make him hear about it because this… this was all his fault. She did lower her voice, however, as she hissed, "You killed a man, Chase. I didn't leave you on a whim. I was even about to stick by you until I realized you didn't even feel bad about it! You know what they call someone who doesn't feel bad about hurting people! A sociopath!"

Chase stared at her before shaking his head.

"You're ridiculous, Cameron. Listen. We're done. We're way past done, in fact. I don't want to see you, talk to you, or look at you. Have whoever's kid you want, date whoever you want to, and have a nice life. But you can give up on thinking I'm going to be in it. What I did, I did for reasons you aren't ever going to understand. You shouldn't have walked back into my life, Allison… I don't want you there."

With that, he turned and pushed the doors forward, leaving the room and, it seemed, leaving Cameron's life the same way she had thought she was leaving his when she went back to Chicago. Had he been right? Did she just want to have it both ways?

There had to be an answer she could figure out for all of this, some way to fix the whole mess. But there wasn't. She had put her cards on the table, and she was in the game, whether she was going to win or lose. It really was the point of no return.


	18. Week Thirteen

**Week Thirteen: Babysitting, Baby-waiting**

"Mariana, I understand if you have to call out, but…" Cuddy let her voice trail off with a sigh. It wasn't fair of her to hold such high expectations for her nanny, she knew. The woman got sick and had her own family just as much as anyone else did. But it was going to lead to the day becoming infinitely more complicated and it was only five o'clock in the morning.

Trying to convince Mariana to come in regardless seemed destined for disaster, considering that the woman had to pause on the phone and throw up two times just within the phone call, so she told her to get better and decided to look for a back-up sitter that could come in on short notice.

She could call up her sister, of course, but she didn't really feel like a whole litany of words about the choices that she'd made recently was going to help her at all right now. She'd barely be able to get through the door against the torrent of advice. She could call her mother as well, but that might go the same way – except that her mother wanted her and House to get back together instead of break up.

Cuddy walked back and forth, almost pacing. There was an idea that was presenting itself to her, but it was doing so with a clear coda that reminded her that it was an awful idea, perhaps the worst idea.

No, she reminded herself a moment later, the worst idea would have been to call House and find out if he could babysit. Not that he hadn't before – and, apart from swallowing a quarter somehow, Rachel had come out of it unscathed – but in his current state House wasn't likely to be much use to anyone at all. He seemed to be barely any use to himself.

But there was another person – a person who was really too entwined with House currently to know any better, but perhaps also someone who really ought to have a day-long lesson in what she was getting herself into. And a person who wasn't currently employed, at least not that Cuddy knew about.

Cuddy picked up the phone and dialed the number.

"Hello?" a previously perky, now extremely tired voice answered.

"Hello, Dr. Cameron. It's Dr. Cuddy. Am I interrupting anything?"

"No," Cameron replied, sounding a little suspicious. "Is this another lecture about what I'm choosing to do about House? Because if it is, I don't need it right now. I have enough going on…"

"I wasn't calling to lecture you, Dr. Cameron." As much as she would have liked to, she reminded herself. Cameron's plan didn't seem to be well thought out at all, but any plan that was connected to House never seemed to be a well thought out plan. "I'm calling because I need your help with something."

"With a case?" Cameron inquired, "Because I can't really be around the hospital right now…"

Cuddy cut her off.

"It's more of a… personal thing."

* * *

><p>Cameron's eyes went wide.<p>

"What do I do?"

"Thought you liked kids, Dr. Cameron," Cuddy told her evenly.

Cameron blinked.

"Well, yeah, but… I haven't babysat since high school. She's…" She watched Rachel take a small lap around the room with eagerness, yelling happily. "Small. And fast."

"And she breaks things, so be careful," Cuddy warned. "Don't let her out the door. She can outwit you. You're smart, Dr. Cameron, but my kid… my kid is wiley."

"As in the coyote?"

Cuddy laughed.

"More effective than the coyote. And less explosions. So keep an eye out. I figure it might help to give you a preview of what you're going to have to expect."

Cameron peeked around Cuddy's shoulder and looked at the small child, who then sat down on the floor and began sticking her fingers in her mouth with happiness. She hadn't really thought about it that far, now had she? She had thought long and hard about having the baby – she'd replayed that scene over and over in her head until she thought her eyes would pop out. But actually raising the child? How hadn't it truly crossed her mind until now?

"I'm up to the challenge." She tried to say it lightly, as if the whole thing was funny, ha-ha funny, something that didn't require that much actual effort.

Inside, she could feel herself shaking.

* * *

><p>"Rachel," Cameron said with increasing exasperation, "I told you not to grab that juice pitcher off the counter. Now look what you've done!" She grabbed the big package of paper towels off of the counter, at least the part of it that wasn't soaked in juice, and by the time she started mopping at it she already hated the tone she had taken with her.<p>

She reached up and rubbed at her eyes, tiredness flooding into her body already. That brief moment was enough time, however, for Rachel to scoot up on the table, swinging her legs and gazing over at her hapless babysitter innocently.

"I was bad, Miss Allison?" she asked, making her eyes as big and wide as saucers. "Are you mad at me?"

In all honesty, the answer was yes. Rachel hadn't stopped moving since Cameron had gotten there, and if this had been the hospital she would have thought – only thought, she promised herself – about sedating the kid so that she could actually sit down for a few moments and have a proper cup of coffee.

Not that she was supposed to be drinking coffee right now. They seemed to keep changing that, admittedly – one journal said to lay off caffeine entirely, another said to do everything in moderation… Cameron was beginning to think the job – pregnant woman as well as babysitter and… God, mother – she was actually going to be a mother… was impossible if caffeine wasn't in the equation.

Not that she was having much time to think about it, before a Crash emitted from the next room.

"Rachel!"


	19. Week Fourteen

**Week Fourteen: Maybe in Another Life, I'll Find You There**

"There's really nothing else I could have done." Cuddy was sitting across from her sister and looking at her mother, too, answering a question that she hadn't been asked.

"You haven't answered the question. Why is he even still employed by you? No matter how smart you keep saying he is, you can't keep justifying having him around. If he's really that much of a genius, wouldn't some other hospital be lucky to have him? Oh, so lucky."

"Can you please just let it go?" Cuddy snapped.

She thought back over the years, remembering each and every time that her sister had driven her nuts. Suddenly, any and all good times of their childhood felt as if they were replaced by a never-ending series of events in which Julia had messed up anything good that Cuddy had wanted for herself, always making herself the prettier of the two even as Cuddy herself had always been considered the smarter of the two.

"You never let it go," Cuddy continued angrily. "You just keep on, you keep pushing it until there's nothing left!" In her mind she added, _Just like House does._

"There's no need to get like that about it," Julia replied with an offended air. "You're the one who is supposed to be running a hospital, teaching people how to be better, how to be healthier, but you surround yourself with the most unhealthy person you've ever known in your life. If you were giving someone advice, if you were telling someone how to live…"

"I'm not a psychologist, Julia. I'm an administrator. I keep things running smoothly. That's my job. That's what I do."

"Sometimes things aren't running smoothly because they aren't meant to, Lisa."

"Meant to? By who? Some omnipotent being?"

"I didn't imply that."

"Yes you did. You're assuming that there is some kind of great scheme to all of this. Well, maybe there is, and maybe there isn't, but all of them is above my pay grade, okay? I'm just here to run my little hospital and try to save some lives. And right now, one of those lives is the one that House has. He's sick. He needs help."

"That's the truth," Julia muttered dryly, and Cuddy glared at her but didn't respond.

"He's gotten a woman pregnant." Cuddy said it under her breath, wanting to take back the words before a second had passed. They did not need to know about this, especially given the conclusions they would jump to as soon as she said the words. She rose from her seat and looked between the two before adding, "Not me" and walking back into the kitchen.

* * *

><p>"If this place started running like a hospital again, and not a soap opera, some of us would be really appreciative."<p>

Chase looked up to see Foreman frowning at him, holding a black pen in his hand as he delivered the words.

Chase sighed. Of all the people who were likely to call him to task, Foreman was definitely one of the more likely. The man might as well have his face in the dictionary next to the phrase "no nonsense", even though he and Thirteen had had a few drama-filled arguments in their day.

Thirteen was avoiding Chase unless it was necessary to discuss a diagnosis, and Taub was generally rolling his eyes with anything Chase had to say to him, dropping half-lidded hints that he didn't think much of the whole situation, either.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Chase asked, trying to act as if he didn't know. Perhaps deflection was the best strategy here, as confronting the situation head on didn't seem to be in his immediate future. He couldn't talk to Cameron – not again, not about this. He'd have to wait until she had the baby and then, maybe if this kid was out of sight and out of mind, Chase could pretend things were back to normal. Back to how they were before Dibala, before House got sick, before Chicago and the reality that Cameron had actually slept with House.

"He means that we're all tired of you," Thirteen spoke up, her voice laced with cynicism. Chase sighed – it wasn't that he didn't care about Thirteen. He would have to be a fool not to. She was beautiful, and a sharp doctor, and a good companion if he had ever wanted to make it go that far. The problem was that he didn't. He couldn't picture himself being married to anyone other than Cameron, and Cameron had come and gone. Perhaps it was the old Catholic guilt, some kind of need to punish himself (and, Thirteen would probably hasten to add, everyone around him.)

"Okay, if this is going to turn into Mean Girls, you'll find me in the other room," Taub said with a shake of his head. "I'm already going to have to deal with this in fourteen years from both sides…"

No one, however, was paying attention to Taub pre-emptively reminiscing about the teenage years of Sophie and Sophia. House had just walked into the room.

"Differential diagnosis," he said, walking over to the whiteboard as if there was nothing at all weird about him walking in during the discussion of yet another crisis he'd brought about.

"For who?" Taub replied dryly. "We're working on a case, but I don't think you've really been paying…"

House ignored him and wrote on the whiteboard, "Nausea, vomiting, groin rash."

"If these are his own symptoms," Chase muttered, "I'm leaving." At least, however, with House being House for the moment, Chase could pretend that nothing had changed. House was simply his mentor, and he was simply the man's fellow, and Cameron was still in Chicago because of, what did they call it? Irreconcilable differences. The nicest, most tactful possible way to say "hey buddy, you had a chance, and you blew it. You blew it straight to hell."


	20. Week Fifteen

**Week Fifteen: Needs**

"We need to talk," Cameron told House, before he had a chance to tell her otherwise. She had appeared at his apartment, hands on her hips, with a tone of voice that didn't accept "no" as a potential answer. House reminded himself that pregnant women had been known to do crazy things like lift up cars, and he didn't really want Cameron to pick up a car and throw it at his head.

"Sure," he said matter-of-factly, "Let's talk, then. Can I get my clothes on first?"

"No," Cameron said, then smiled blandly. It was a bad joke, and she knew it, but House simply backed up in response to let her get into the apartment. "It's been months, and we haven't actually sat down and really talked about why we're doing this."

"What you mean to say," House countered, "Is why you're doing it. I don't recall being given a whole lot of choice in the matter. This is your plan, and it's a crazy plan, and I'm all for crazy plans… But I don't think this is going to work out, Cameron. Thank you and please play again."

"That's it. You don't even want there to be any kind of hope. Is that it? You'd rather just roll over and die?"

"You'd rather read into everything I've said? Why do I even bother saying anything at all when I can get the Cliff Notes on what I actually said from you?"

House threw his hands up in the air and hobbled over to retrieve his cane from the corner of the room.

"Where are you going?" Cameron barked.

"Somewhere there's a bomb shelter," House replied. "I think little Katie is going to go kaboom." He looked at her.

She crossed her arms in front of her chest.

"Would it be completely out of line to ask you to take something seriously for once in your life? I mean, you're dying, and you don't even take that seriously. If you don't take life and death seriously… then how the hell am I supposed to get through to you? I mean, that's all there is, when you boil down to it."

"Unless you listen to Chase," House fired back, "He thought there was a lot more out there. God and all of that."

"I think it's just life and death," Cameron reiterated, "And if you waste it, then it's gone. And you're gone."

"Then why care about anything?" House shot back, "If there's no one to care and no one to impress, why not just walk on out? Face the final curtain as said the Chairman…"

"Mao?" Cameron interrupted.

"Of the Board," House replied, rolling his eyes, "But if we're going to talk, then let's talk. My clock is ticking, as it were, and I don't have all day."

"Well, so's mine," Cameron said, "And if we don't work this out, I may just have to hit you up on child support for being the stubborn ass that you love to prove yourself to be."

"You would sue a man with leukemia for child support? That's not the Cameron we know and love."

"No, that's the Cameron you have royally pissed off recently. What more can I do to try and help you, House? I've given up everything that was important to me for you."

"No, you gave up everything for yourself. You can't be happy unless you're a martyr."

"What the hell does that mean?"

"You left Chase because of the whole 'dead dictator' debacle, because if you were okay with that, that meant you weren't a regular Mother Theresa. You weren't what you saw when you looked in the mirror, or what you wanted to see, rather."

Cameron snorted at him.

"And you are? Did you dream of growing up to be… you? Or were you always you, even before the leg? Maybe even before you were born?"

"Yeah," House retorted, "Maybe I was formed bitter in my mother's womb. Maybe it's genetic. I suppose we'll find out. Or you will, if you decide to raise this kid instead of using it for spare parts and then discarding it."

Cameron looked at him, horrified, her mouth hanging slightly open.

"That's the worst thing I've ever heard you say."

"You should spend more time around me, then."

Cameron let out a long, frustrated gasp and sat down.

"It's exhausting, dealing with you. Listen to you. All you do is grouse and complain."

"Was there a point here or are we just having an airing of grievances? I didn't realize that today was Festivus."

"I need you to step up. There's some things you have to do. I can't do this all alone, okay? It's too much."

"Step up and do what, Cameron? This kid hasn't even been born yet. I'm all up for changing diapers and babysitting when it's born… if I'm actually alive, that is. Wouldn't that be the kicker? If I kick off before then? That would put a spanner in your plan, wouldn't it?"

Cameron kicked his cane, and House stumbled back, steadying himself on the dresser.

"You're a real dick, you know that, right?"

"This isn't the first time that I've heard those words… Not even the first coming from you. You think that I'd change my tune just because I'm dying?"

"Well, you were the one who said dying changes everything."

"Did I?" House asked, and then he shrugged. "For you, babies change everything, I guess. Nice cute wiggly babies with their lifesaving, life-changing powers. Maybe ours will come out already with an itty bitty cane. No, you'd want yours to be sunshine and rainbows, blonde hair and a bright smile, right, Cameron? Go home." He turned to walk back to his bed. "You're out of your league yet again."

"And what league is that?" Cameron fired back, "The league of misanthropic idiots?" But the words fell hollow, and she turned to leave, wondering whether she was in over her head or whether maybe she had already drowned.


End file.
